


The Fundamentals

by feverly



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Domestic, M/M, Making Up, can't we act like adults here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-08
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2020-02-28 08:38:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18752845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feverly/pseuds/feverly
Summary: When they married, they were both looking to the future - not to the past, and not inwards into their own hearts. Battle-proven experience made them certain of who they were, and they presumed that was enough to navigate a life together.What a load of goobbue shite.





	The Fundamentals

Around the end of the second week was when Painted Elm regretted it.

A partner who wouldn't return for so long after a fight, who was clearly nursing his wrath as long as he could, was a sign they had achieved something - made a life together - that was worth hurting. He regretted it, and immediately accompanying this realization was the incendiary, subsequent moment of enlightenment that he was afraid, and he wanted Raiv'na to come back.

Not merely returned, but to come back to him.

And then he cursed angrily at the slippery dishes as he scrubbed them, spewing up bubbles onto himself and the counter and creating twice the mess to clean up. Rather stupid of him, he mused, to get hitched without expecting marital strife of some kind. He wasn't some spring buck but he was sure acting as dumb and short-sighted as one.

The next week he spent weeding, gardening, cleaning, re-painting and maintaining every single piece, nook and cranny of their cottage that he could lay hands on. He ripped up damp floorboards and laid in tiled stonework; he fixed chinks in the grout of the fireplace mantel; he planted a new chocobo weather-vane amidst the flower beds, where it turned this way and that in the breeze like a cheery traffic constable. Any mother-in-law would have been sufficiently impressed. Yet the bed was hard to fall asleep in at night alone, no matter how hard he toiled during the day.

 

By the time Raiv'na slipped back to their house on a pouring, thundering, atrociously sweltering Gridanian night, Elm had made up his mind that at least he would try to shore up his half of things, with or without knowing the miqo'te's heart.

~~

Raiv'na knocked on the front door, cutting through the roar of the rain so cleanly Elm only half-suspected (and quarter-hoped) it was him.

When he opened the door, he was greeted by more hat than person. It was a wide-brimmed thing, so generous it easily shielded Raiv'na's shoulders from the rain, which instead ran off onto the porch in thick rivulets. Elm frowned. It was a new hat; when he had stormed out of the house, he hadn't been wearing this monstrosity. The miqo'te lifted his gaze and two glowing eyes pierced through the darkness at Elm.

"Well, don't just stand there. Let me in."

Moving like a rusty automaton suddenly given orders, Elm stepped aside and Raiv'na practically darted inside, brushing past him and flicking droplets all over Elm's nightshirt and the rug and the entryway cabinet. Elm would have quipped about this being Raiv'na's home too, but he was not so harsh and Raiv had seemed to expect a warmer welcome.

Looking closer, Raiv's entire outfit was new. The hat was matched by a cloak, an embroidered waistcoat and a velveteen shirt, and the whole ensemble was smartly complemented by fringed gloves and boots.

"So, where've you been?" Elm asked instead of saying 'welcome home', and he mentally kicked himself.

"Everywhere." Raiv hung his cloak up and stuck his feet down the boot jack, summarily removing both thigh-highs and placing them in the cabinet, his movements betraying not a hint of temper.

"Everywhere?" Elm's gaze tiredly tracked him as he moved into the living room, turning on lights and unpacking his luggage.

"Limsa and then Kugane. Thavnair mostly."

"Mm," he crossed his arms and leaned on the wall.

"It rained as much in Limsa and Kugane as here, I could swear you had sent thunderclouds to harass me, but in Thavnair they had opened these marvelous conservatories to visitors..." Raiv pulled several more outfits out of his bag and Elm vaguely registered that these were ones he recognized. The snow-globe, books and bottles of wine that appeared in tow were new. Grabbing the globe, Raiv turned around. "You look like hell."

Elm squared his shoulders defensively. Raiv padded over, eyes narrowed in skepticism until the sudden, cold touch of unfamiliar stonework beneath his feet surprised him.

"You put these in?" The miqo'te stepped back to further examine the tile work. Smooth limestone inlaid with a motif of Gridanian roses; Elm had thought it would satisfy Raiv's taste for the refined and expensive while still fitting the otherwise warm and cozy interior of the rest of the cottage.

"Hadn't we complained about the rot intruding into the house from the entryway?" He shrugged away from the wall.

Raiv made a non-committal noise, but it was clear he remembered.

Well, thought Elm, now was as good a moment as any, so he asked outright, "You're not angry?"

Raiv answered by way of holding his tongue and busying himself putting more newly-acquired paraphernalia around the living room.

"I mean - I *was* angry." He said at last, once he had run out of items and come back to the snowglobe. It brightened at his touch with magic and glowed a warm, sunset orange. Elm peered closer. Inside, tiny dancers sashayed and beckoned to him from a beach surrounded by glittering waves. "But I petered out sometime in Kugane, and then I tried to forget about you entirely. I actually enjoyed myself. I went ballroom dancing, I treated myself to massages and onsen, I bought everything I needed and everything I wanted...But even in the midst of all that, in the oddest moments, I'd think of you."

The globe changed to a view over a frozen waterfall, half a malm high, nestled in the crags of a snowy mountain range.

"And I'd think of what you would need and what you would want. Whether you would like the pair of earrings I was considering, what you would say about the legitimacy of the 'Complete Volumes of Such-and-Such' I found in some dingy secondhand stall - and I found myself buying things not only for myself, but for *you*."

He turned to Elm and the snowglobe whirled with him, settling into a scene of rain over what was unmistakably the Black Shroud. Elm felt his heart clench.

Raiv'na extended the globe to him, voice softening. "And I thought that since I was buying souvenirs, I might as well bring them back to the one they're for."

Elm reached for the globe, set it firmly down on the cabinet and drew Raiv'na into his arms instead. Raiv'na pressed back, burying his face into Elm's chest and melting against him.

"Welcome home," Elm huffed.

Raiv'na tilted his head back to smirk, "I'm back."

And he pulled Elm down into a kiss.

 

~~

By the time they disentangled, Elm was of a full mind to return to bed and sleep straight until morning, but Raiv'na steered him towards the couch instead, where they settled in and the miqo'te summoned his rapier to prod the fireplace to life. Then Elm found himself not minding loss of sleep much at all, not with Raiv'na snuggling up under his arm, purring close.

"You know," Raiv said, pulling up one of the expensive-looking bottles of wine he'd purchased, "I went through a lot of trouble to get this vintage, but...now that I'm back, I just want the cheap port Limumu got us."

Elm laughed and kissed Raiv's lighter-colored eye. They could stay up until sunrise then, fetch ice-cream from the ice-box and pair it with cheap, sweet wine, they could talk and talk until they babbled tired nonsense. In the morning, Elm would show him the chocobo weather-vane and Raiv would laugh at it.

They weren't perfect, but they were going to be fine.


End file.
